Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 3 February 2021
838. Deputy Mark Ward asked the Minister for Health the status of the CORU registration process for psychotherapists under the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005; when he will indicate his plans to give proper and meaningful priority to the Shared Vision recommendations on access to counselling services in the community; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5752/21]
View answerThe Counsellors and Psychotherapists Registration Board held their inaugural meeting on 31 May 2019. The work of the Counsellors and Psychotherapists Registration Board is significantly more challenging than for registration boards for some other professions, owing to the different and complex entry paths into these professions, the variety of titles used and the variety and number of courses and course providers.
The Board is now undertaking the substantial work required to open the registers for counsellors and psychotherapists. This work includes consideration of titles to be protected and minimum qualifications to be required of existing practitioners applying for registration in the transitional period and for future graduates. Given the complexity of this work there is not yet a date for the opening of the registers.
With regard to access to counselling services in the community, in line with Sláintecare, Sharing the Vision envisages an increasing role for the primary care sectors which, if appropriately resourced and with appropriate governance, can provide a comprehensive range of interventions. A core component of this is increasing access to counselling and talk therapies.
Recommendation 16 of Sharing the Vision proposes that access to a range of counselling supports and talk therapies in the community/primary care sector should be available on the basis of identified need so that all individuals, across the lifespan, with a mild-to-moderate mental health difficulty can receive prompt access to accessible care through their GP/Primary Care Centre. Counselling supports and talk therapies must be delivered by appropriately qualified and accredited professionals. Recommendation 31 proposes that the potential for digital health solutions to enhance service delivery and empower service users should be developed.
With regards to implementation, the recently established National Implementation Monitoring Committee (NIMC) for Sharing the Vision will oversee the implementation of the recommendations in the policy and monitor progress. The NIMC is supported by a Reference Group of Service Users and Families and the NIMC Specialist Groups.
The HSE is also establishing an implementation group, one of the first tasks of which will be to ascertain ongoing Sharing the Vision aligned tasks and projects.
With regards to ongoing HSE projects aligned to Sharing the Vision, HSE Mental Health commenced a service improvement project in January 2018 to ensure greater consistency and equity of access to talk therapies, with a view to developing a Model of Care for adults who attend specialist mental health services accessing talking therapies. While the project focuses specifically on adults attending specialist mental health services, it also describes other services where talk therapies are currently provided from HSE funding.
Building on a stepped care approach, the Model of Care is expected to involve an assessment of the need for talking therapies taking into account stakeholder perspectives and the prevalence of mental health difficulties within the adult population. It will consider evidence-based talking therapies best-suited to meet the identified needs and outline a recommended operational model for talking therapies provided by General Adult Community Mental Health Teams.
Of course, it is important to recognise that the development of any recommended operational model would be a substantial and complex process, with numerous steps and issues to be worked through, as appropriate.
Finally, many significant recent developments in online mental health service provision have been expedited in the advent of Covid 19. These initiatives are early and necessary examples of the sort of holistic, whole of population approach to mental health service development that Sharing the Vision will be promoting and seeking to advance, in line with the development of specialist supports.
